XI. 1714. Great 48. change substitution of the fe male line in Spain respect on of other powers. CHAP. dynasty of queens, surrounded by Republican institutions, on an unwilling people, the case was entirely altered. The marriage of a prince of France with an infanta of Spain became then a matter of the very which the highest importance; it threatened the precise danger which the War of the Succession was undertaken to for the male avert, which the Treaty of Utrecht was concluded to made in this prevent, though it did so only imperfectly. There is, the interests indeed, in that treaty the most express prohibition against the crowns of France and Spain being united on the same head; but that is neither the real danger to be dreaded, nor has England left herself any means of preventing it. It is the "Family Alliance" now concluded which is the real evil; and if the succession to the Spanish crown should open to any future King of the French, in consequence of it, how could we, who, in defiance of the Treaty of Utrecht, have opened to the Infanta the succession to the throne, object to his ascending it? We have fallen into the pit which we ourselves dug; we have been punished by the work of our own hands-another among the numerous proofs which contemporary as well as past history affords, that there is a moral superintendence of the affairs of men, and that great violations of national duty work out, in the national consequences to which they lead, a just retribution upon the third and fourth generations. 49. of the Span is unchanged by the Re The subsequent change which has taken place in the The danger government of France has neither removed nor alleviated ish alliance these dangers. The Orleans dynasty may be dispossessed from the throne; a Republic may succeed; a consul or a president may wield its power instead of a king -it is the same: the evil has been done, and cannot be undone. A family compact may subsist equally between volution of 1848. XI. 1714. affiliated republics as between connected sovereigns; a CHAP. revolutionary dynasty will never fail on a crisis to look for support in governments having the same origin, and actuated by the same interests. They will never cease to regard England with envy and jealousy, the greater, because she has achieved a combination of general freedom with stability of government, which they have been unable to effect. When a war of opinion arises-as arise it will and must in Europe-the revolutionary governments will adhere to each other, and their hostility will be mainly directed against this country. By establishing a revolutionary government on the thrones of the Peninsula, we secured a cordial and steady ally to France in every contest that may arise with the legitimate powers; the family compact between France and Spain, which Harley and Bolingbroke bequeathed, by the peace of Utrecht, to these powers in the eighteenth, will be succeeded by a national compact, from the policy of Grey and Palmerston in forming the Quadruple Alliance, in the nineteenth century. When England next faces her Continental foes, and contends for her existence on the waves, whether her enemies are directed by an emperor, a king, a president, or a consul, the fleets by which she will be menaced will issue not only from Brest and Cherburg, but from Antwerp and Ostend, from Ferrol and Cadiz; and her faithful allies, in her greatest and most glorious struggle, will, by her own act, be converted into her bitterest and most formidable enemies. CHAPTER XII. MARLBOROUGH-EUGENE-FREDERICK-NAPOLEON-WELLINGTON. CHAP. 1714. 1. the system of war in Marlborough's time. THE extraordinary merit of Marlborough's military talents will not be duly appreciated, unless the peculiar nature of the contest he was called on to direct, and Change in the character which it assumed in his time, is taken into consideration. The era of feudalism had ceasedat least so far as the raising of a military force by its machinery was concerned. Louis XIV., indeed, when pressed for men, more than once summoned the ban and the arrière ban of France to his standards, and he always had a gallant array of feudal nobility in his antechambers, or around his headquarters. But war, both on his part and on that of his antagonists, was carried on, generally speaking, with standing armies, and supported by the belligerent state. The vast, though generally tumultuary, array which the Plantagenet or Valois sovereigns summoned to their support, but which, bound only to serve for forty days, generally disappeared before a few months of hostilities were over, could no longer be relied on. The modern system, invented by Revolutionary France, of making war maintain war, and sending forth starving multitudes with arms in their hands, to subsist by the plunder of the adjoining states, was XII. 1714. unknown. The national passions had not been roused, CHAP. which alone could bring it into operation. The decline of the feudal system forbade the hope that contests could be maintained by the chivalrous attachment of a faithful nobility: the democratic spirit had not been so aroused as to supply its place by popular fervour. Religious passions, indeed, had been strongly excited; but they had prompted men rather to suffer than to act : the disputations of the pulpit were their natural arena ; in the last extremity, they were more allied to the resignation of the martyr than the heroism of the soldier. Between the feudal and the democratic eras there extended a long period of above a century and a half, during which governments had acquired the force, and mainly relied on the power, of standing armies; but the resources at their disposal for the support of these were so limited that the greatest economy in the husbanding both of men and money was indispensable. Richard Coeur-de-Lion, Edward III., and Henry V., 2. the feudal were the models of feudal leaders, and their wars were Nature of a faithful mirror of the feudal contests. Setting forth wars. at the head of a force, which, if not formidable in point of numbers, was generally extremely so from equipment and the use of arms, the nobles around them were generally too proud and high-spirited to decline a combat, even on any possible terms of disadvantage. They took the field, as the knights went to a champ clos, to engage their adversaries in single conflict; and it was deemed equally dishonourable to retire without fighting from the one as the other. But they had no permanent force at their disposal to secure a lasting result, even from the greatest victories. The conquest of a petty province, a diminutive fortress, was often their XII. 1714. CHAP. only result. Hence the desperate battles, so memorable in warlike annals, which they fought, and hence the miserable and almost nugatory results which almost invariably followed the greatest triumphs. Cressy, Poictiers, and Azincour, followed by the expulsion of the English from France; Methven and Dunbar, by their ignominious retreat from Scotland; Ascalon and Ptolemais, by their being driven from the Holy Land, must immediately occur to every reader. This state of war necessarily imprinted a corresponding character on the feudal generals. They were high-spirited and daring in action-often skilful in tactics-generally ignorant of strategy covetous of military renown, but careless of national advancement-and often more solicitous to conquer an adversary in single conflict, than to reduce a fortress or win a province. Great 3. But when armies were raised at the expense, not of nobles, but of kings-when their cost became a lasting when armies and heavy drain on the royal exchequer, and they were by Govern- yet felt to be indispensable to national security. change were paid ment. sovereigns grew desirous of a more durable and profitable result from their victories. Standing armies, though commonly powerful-often irresistible when accumulated in large bodies-were yet extremely expensive. Their expense was felt the more from the great difficulty of getting the people in every country, at that period, to submit to any considerable amount of direct taxation. More than one flourishing province had been lost, or powerful monarchy overturned, in the attempt to increase such burdens; as, for example, the loss of Holland to Spain, and the execution of Charles I. in England. In this dilemma, arising from the experienced necessity of raising standing armies on the one hand, and the extreme |